{Good bye, Chicago}

Well, we are now back in Provo - a very bittersweet thing. We LOVED our time in Chicago. Loved it. We loved the area we were in, the husband loved his work [I'll let him blog about that sometime....now he's in school and busy again...bummer.] loved the ward that we attended, the wonderful friends that we met, and the millions of memories that we made. It was sad to leave, but exciting to go back "home" to Provo.

I say "home" because we are only living here temporarily while we finish up our collegiate careers, but we have been here for a while. It was nice to get back to our own house with our own things. I love our kitchen, I love our couches, I love our books, I love our pictures hanging all over the walls. It was weird living in someone else's house being surrounded by things that they love but don't mean a whole lot to us. I liked having our "things" surround us again, things that represent us, our values, what we love. It was nice to be back in our place.

We left early on Monday morning and drove all day....all day. We stopped every 2 hours or so for a bathroom/gas/stretch our legs break and then pushed on. Monday night we stayed in North Platte, NE and met up with some good friends of ours, the Porters! They were headed to Michigan to start their PhD program and we were both traveling on I-80 in opposite directions. They called us up and turns out we both had plans to stay the night in North Platte. It was fun to have some dinner/dessert with them that night - random, but good to catch up with them!

Tuesday we left early again and drove and drove and drove and made it to Provo right around dinner time. Our friends, the Rileys,  were nice enough to have us over for dinner that night which was great because they spent their whole summer in Russia so we had lots and lots to catch up on! It was great to see them.....

Here are some pictures of our very long, but fast drive back to provo:

Driving west means driving directly into the sunset - Also, bugs all over the windshield.

In North Platte they were having a cricket plague... nasty. Everywhere you stepped there were dozens of them... gross.

Good - I'm glad they have the best looking cashiers... because that's definitively what I'm looking for at a gas station. No, I did not go in to see if they had the best looking cashiers.... I would only go in if I could have taken a picture of them, but that would have just been super awkward, especially if they were not good looking....so it will forever be a mystery.

This sign was on the front of a gas station.... Yes, thank you for confirming that fact to me. I felt like our whole drive we were in the middle of nowhere...